


Snow Lily

by AsagiStilinski



Series: Yoitober 2019 [14]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, Character's Name Spelled as Yuri, Flowers, Hanahaki Disease, Inktober 2019, Light Angst, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Oblivious Katsuki Yuuri, One-Sided Attraction, One-Sided Christophe Giacometti/Victor Nikiforov, Pining Victor Nikiforov, Sad Victor Nikiforov, Secrets, Unrequited Love, Victor Nikiforov Is In Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-21 03:04:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21067751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsagiStilinski/pseuds/AsagiStilinski
Summary: Hanahaki is a well known disease, something that people take seriously and, at times, take extreme measures to avoidIt wasn't like it was anything new, and honestly, everyone had the potential to develop it, to suffer from it... but it was still a surprise when, months after the Grand Prix banquet where he met Yuri Katsuki, Viktor coughed up his first petal





	Snow Lily

**Author's Note:**

> Day 14- "Overgrown"
> 
> For the record, regarding Yuri's name, I have no idea if the different Kanji spelling has to do with a different Romaji spelling or if Yuri even spells his name with the Kanji described, I'm just taking shots in the dark because on ALL of the official material his name is always spelled with one "u" and the less common spelling seems to suit his charector more so... *finger guns* Guess work!

In terms of diseases, Hanahaki was a relatively new one

The first documented case appeared in 1924, when a girl choked to death on violets in a speakeasy in New York City

Despite this, it was the Japanese who came up with the most popular name for the disease- Flower Vomiting

The Westerners thought it had a melodic and melancholy tune to it, so they adopted it after the second case hit airwaves, when a young Japanese man collapsed outside of a wedding, red roses spilling out of his mouth with streams of blood following after them

Ever since, Hanahaki had slowly spread more and more

It wasn't contagious, and no one _really_ understood exactly how it worked

Yes they knew it was connected to unrequited love, and yes they had even developed a surgery to prevent the condition from being fatal, but there were still so many things that they didn't understand

Why and how had it started?

How was it biologically possible?

It had something to do with flower spores but no one knew quite what it was about unrequited love that made them blossom

By the time almost a century had passed, Hanahaki was as much a normal disease as chicken pox or cancer

No one was surprised by it anymore, though researchers were still hard at work trying to dissect it

Different people took to it in different ways

Some tried not to fall in love, to prevent it from striking them

Others cemented their first relationships so hard and fast that marrying your highschool sweetheart had become a colloquial term for trying to avoid Hanahaki

Others spent hours every day on dating apps and bar hopping, looking for The One

And others still did nothing at all

Not everyone was afraid of Hanahaki, Viktor never had been

Not that he didn't fear the experience of it, just that.... he had never really thought he would develop it

As a teenager, he had definitely been the Highschool Sweetheart type

He had wanted to find a relationship and put down roots in it so fast that there would never be time for a single bud to blossom

But the older he got and the lonelier he stayed, he began coming to the heart-breaking realization that he may not ever fall in love- _at all_

And to Viktor, that was far worse than death by choking on flowers

But then, like a train wreck, it just sort of all.... _happened_, one day in December

He met Yuri Katsuki at the Grand Prix banquet and fell as hard as he imagined anyone possibly could

He understood, in the most poetic parts of his mind, why flowers grew until they killed in the chests of people who's love was unrequited

Because falling in love felt like a flower blossoming in his chest

Perhaps, he reasoned, the return of such love nurtured the flower and allowed it to grow in a harmless way, but without that return of love to help it stay steady, it would grow too rapidly, the love would become so intense with the addition of loss, that it would have no choice but to choke it's host to death

He knew that he was in love because for three months he held out hope that his love would be returned

He reasoned that he hadn't heard from Yuri in all that time because he was busy getting ready for next season, and who could blame him for that? Especially after what happened at the Grand Prix...

But then June came and Viktor realized, bitterly, that Yuri hadn't even qualified for preliminaries- if he was even still _trying to_

And as he listened to Yakov go on about how much practice Viktor needed to get in before his first assignment of the season, he felt a strange tickle in his throat, and had to rush off to the bathroom as it grew worse and worse

He coughed into the sink, over and over again, and when he looked down, he went pale, the sight of soft white petals blended in with specks of blood caught his sight, and he felt like he might just collapse then and there

_"You barely know him,"_ Chris had pointed out when Viktor retold the story

_"Surely you can get over it,"_

"I don't think so," Viktor mumbled back, listlessly dragging his fingers over Makkachin's soft fur again and again as he stared into the camera on his phone

"I don't think this is the kind of love I can just get over,"

_"You knew him for TWO HOURS!"_

"I don't think it matters,"

It wasn't impossible to get over your unrequited love- far from it, but the amount of work it took...

Viktor knew he didn't have it in him

_"Then why don't you try to call him instead, mon cher? See if you can meet up, see if you can make a.... better first impression or something, or atleast try to charm him into a freindship, perhaps if your love changes to a requited love of freindship instead of an unrequited love of romance it will work out,"_

"I don't know...." is what Viktor managed to say

He never tried to contact Yuri

He felt rejected and that didn't exactly make him eager to see the object of his affections

The thing about Hanahaki is that there isn't really a standard for it

There's no hard and fast list of rules that all cases abided by

Even the ones that seemed to be the mot common had their exceptions

The timeline though was by far the loosest of all the "rules"

Some people died within weeks of developing Hanahaki, for others it took years, even decades

The longest case on record lasted thirty years

He had loved his middle-school sweetheart since he was fourteen, and on the night of her wedding, he finally passed away, with cherry blossoms filling his lungs

So Viktor wasn't entirely surprised that seven months went by and he was still kicking

Sure, he had been getting weaker, the disease getting worse, that wasn't unusual, it was true of any untreated illness, but he didn't mind too much

He had still won gold

"Viktor, _please_, you have to let this go," Chris insisted miserably, shifting on his feet as he stood in front of the stall door, a pained cringe on his face as he listened to Viktor gag on more lily petals

"I... I _can't_ Chris," Viktor panted softly from inside the bathroom stall

"You _can_ if you TRY!"

Chris very rarely got upset about anything- especially when Viktor was concerned- but even he had his limits

"No I can't," Viktor sighed softly, finally done with his latest round of vomiting, carefully shifting to lean back against the wall and catch his breath

"I know it sounds crazy, to love someone who you only met once, to love them so deeply that you would die for them but.... even though it hurts, I just don't want to let it go.... I don't want to stop loving him,"

"It isn't as crazy as you think it is, _mon cheri_," Chris replied quietly, reaching down into his breast pocket and pulling out the compact mirror that he kept there

"I'm not asking you to stop loving him, I'm just asking you to... change the _way_ you love him, **please** Viktor, if you just.... develop a freindship with him then you won't-"

"You don't know that that even works," Viktor sighed softly, reaching out to pick up the fallen lily petal, staring at it with the most bizarre sense of longing, bitterness, and.. _hope_, weirdly enough

They said that the determining factor in Hanahaki is hope, that as long as you have even a shred of it, you'll stay alive, but the moment you lose that last strand of hope.....

That's when the flowers refuse to stop growing

"I _do_ know," Chris insisted with a snap, popping open the compact and glaring into the little mirror

"Sometimes it does but sometimes it doesn't," Viktor replied simply, finally forcing himself up from the floor, setting the petal in his pocket, and unlocking the door to step out of the stall

"I... _do_ want to see him again though..... maybe he'll qualify next year, for the GPF,"

"Are you crazy?" Chris hissed, his face pale as he watched Viktor make his way to the sink

"You plan on suffering through this for another _year_!?! _VIKTOR_! He didn't qualify this year for even the preliminaries, what makes you think-"

"He had a rough year, happens to us all," Viktor replied easily, brushing off his freind's concern as he washed his hands

"Except for you, evidently," Chris replied coldly

"....I wouldn't say that," Viktor said softly, staring at his freind's reflection in the bathroom mirror, at the torn up look on Chris' face as the gold-medalist reached for some papper towels

"Chris, smile! You won silver tonight, that's amazing!! Come, let's go back to the banquet and celebrate hm? No more of this flower talk, atleast.... atleast not until tommorrow ok? Let's celebrate tonight, please?"

"Swear to me Vitya," Chris said slowly

"I'll celebrate but you have to _swear_ to me that you'll contact that boy and try to become his freind, if nothing else, _please_,"

Viktor's face was grim, but he soon forced it into a smile, sighing and tossing the towels out before walking closer and placing a hand on Chris' shoulder, letting it linger for only a moment before starting for the door

"If it makes you happy, Christophe, I'll do that, just give me until after Worlds ok? I need to concentrate on that, atleast, I don't want to be distracted,"

"Whatever you say Vitya," Chris said softly, heaving a breath as Viktor placed his hand on the door, pausing to look over his shoulder at his freind

"Come on Chris, enough of this sad talk, for all you know, this freindship thing won't even work, so stop pushing it for tonight, ok, _dorogaya_?"

Chris heaved a sigh, staring into his compact listlessly, but his eyes weren't on the mirror

They were on the little blue rose petal, sealed forever behind a thin peice of glass, on the inside of the lid

His own bout of Hanahaki replayed in his mind, and he bit down sourly on his tongue, shutting the compact and shoving it back into his pocket

"Whatever you say, Vitya," he replied quietly, turning away from the stall to start walking towards his freind

"Anything you say..."

~+~

When Yuri's Stammi Viccino video went live, Viktor felt more hope than he had in over a year, and for the first time since last March, he could breathe clearly

The clarity in his airways was all the motivation he needed to pack up and move to Japan

Yuri must want him, he was sure

He wasn't going to experience any more setbacks, or let himself give up hope

He swore

He was determined

Except that.... things didn't quite go the way he had been expecting, even then

Yuri ran away when Viktor tried to get to know him better, but that was fine, he was just shy, apparently, for some reason

And he hadn't wanted to sleep with Viktor, but that was ok too, because if he was shy then ofcourse he wouldn't want to sleep with him right away...

And.... when talking about Eros he had chosen _food_ instead of Viktor but that was alright, maybe Yuri still didn't quite understand the concept of Eros or was too embarrassed to say it was Viktor to Viktor's face....

And when he suggested being Yuri's lover he had said "no"....

But...

When they left the beach, Viktor coughed into his hand

He blamed it on the sea air, but for the first time since coming to Japan, he found a petal in his palm

From that moment on, his Hanahaki seemed to be on and off, much like the hopes he had for a relationship with Yuri

Good days left him clear-lunged and hopefull that he wasn't just imagining this entire relationship, that Yuri felt the same way he did and was just shy about expressing it

Bad days left him locking himself in the bathroom gagging, trying to keep the tears at bay as he struggled for a breath and worried that he had misread Yuri's signals all this time

Chris called almost daily, and Viktor lied to him everytime

_"Our relationship is moving along quite nicely, I'm SURE that he's going to fall in love with me!"_

Viktor wasn't sure

He spent months not being sure

The night before they left for China was a bad night, emotionally

Yuri had been distant all day, and although Viktor would eventually come to realize that this was due to his anxiety, at the time, it just felt like rejection

He coughs up a full blossom that night, more than he had ever choked up before, wich leaves him with a cold vine of fear creeping through his veins

The Hanahaki is getting worse

Does that mean that Yuri doesn't love him at all, or is it just Viktor projecting his anxieties harder than before?

It's so hard to tell....

_"Viktor? ...Are you sure you're ok?"_

Viktor is on the floor of the Katsukis' bathroom, heaving for breaths as he tiredly tries to clean up the droplets of blood that had landed on the floor

He's dizzy and exhausted and his throat hurts like a motherfucker

"I'm fine Yuri..." is what he manages to call back, weakly, exhaustedly

He just wants to pass out there and then....

_"You don't **sound** ok, what's going on? I heard you gagging, are you sick?"_

"I'm ok, really,"

_".......Viktor..... I.... I know that you've been... you've been throwing up lately... I-I.... I've heard you..... are you.... are you **ok**?"_

Ah.... damn....

He had really hoped Yuri would never know about that...

Flushing the bloodied peices of toilet papper, he forced his way to his feet and stepped out of the bathroom, weakly smiling at the anxious looking skater in front of him

"I'm fine Yuri, I promise, I.. always get a little bit sick before big competitions, I guess that rule doesn't just apply to my own,"

Yuri looked like he didn't believe him, and honestly, Viktor didn't blame him

"You wouldn't lie to me... would you, Viktor?"

"Never, Yuri, I promise,"

He wished he was telling the truth

Yuri stepped forward, wrapped his arms around Viktor, and hugged him tightly

Viktor inhaled and the air was so fresh and clean that it burned his throat

"Yuri... can I ask you a strange question?"

"Ofcourse Viktor, anything,"

He bit his tongue, but he had to know

"....Do you like lilies?"

"Lilies?" Yuri asked in confusion, pulling back and staring at Viktor with notable concern

"I mean.... I guess? They're ok? I.... not... especially.... why?"

"N-No reason, it's just ah... well I noticed alot of lilies thrown on the ice at Nationals... I wanted to get you flowers but I want them to be your favorites,"

Yuri smiled weakly, his face a little red as he pulled back

"Um, my favorites are roses, I didn't notice alot of lilies but... I guess it's because of my name,"

"Your name?" Viktor asked in confusion

"Yeah, see... the way naming works in Japanese is that the kanji you use determines the meaning, we spell names differently just like everywhere else, except that unlike with Western names where the meaning is determined by the sound and not the spelling, the meaning here is determined by the spelling rather than the sound, so... 'Yuri', the way I spell my name, means 'abundant ideals', but that's the less common way to spell it- wich is why I spell it with one 'u' when writing it in the Western alphabet, to keep it different from the way 'Yuuri'- with two Us, the common spelling- is spelled, wich is usually for girls, _that_ spelling of 'Yuri' means 'lily',"

Viktor swallowed- hard- and forced himself to smile wider

"That's so beautifull, your language is... gorgeous," he promised softly

"And your name... it's even moreso, both versions, but I think I like the way you spell it the most," he promised

"Well thank you," Yuri smiled shyly, reaching down to carefully loop his fingers through Viktor's, pulling him towards the living room

"Your name in English means 'victory' right?"

"Pretty much, it means 'to conquer' or 'to win',"

"That's a very pretty, very appropriate name for you," Yuri noted with a soft smile

"Well thank you," he noted with a slight laugh

"Is there a way to spell it in Kanji?"

"Um... I'm not sure, traditionally no, but maybe my mom can help us find something, hm?"

Viktor nodded slowly, squeezing Yuri's hand as they walked

"I'd like that, my lovely little lily,"

"Lily huh?"

"What? I told you I liked both," Viktor winked

If he was going to choke to death on flowers, he decided in that moment, he was glad that it was lilies

~+~

In the parking garage, below the ice rink, waiting for Yuri's free skate, Viktor could feel the petals pushing up through his throat

It was all he could do to force himself to talk through the petals that wanted so very badly to push up his throat

But he managed

He watched Yuri's performance with one hand over his mouth, trying to keep the flowers at bay

He could feel the lilies at the back of his throat, pushing... pushing... pushing....

He jumped forward

He kissed Yuri

And when Yuri kissed him back....

It felt like the lilies had shriveled up, turning to ashes in his throat and flowing back down, letting him breathe clearly as he stared down into Yuri's beautifull brown eyes

He coughed once as they skated off the ice, a single quarter of a petal leaving his lips

And that was the last time Viktor ever coughed up flowers

He never told anyone else

He never told Yuri

As far as anyone but Chris knew, he had never experienced Hanahaki

It was their little secret, and he intended to keep it that way

The day Viktor's Hanahaki went away permanently though, unbeknownst to anyone else, the disease cropped up in someone else

Thousands of miles away in Hasetsu, Kenjirou Minami found himself coughing into a napkin as he watched the live media coverage of Yuri Katsuki and Viktor Nikiforov sharing a kiss for the first time

When he pulled the napkin away, he found a lily petal nestled within it


End file.
